[quaz]

Interesting reading here, let me add some perspective. I live in the Milwaukee area and consult with Harley on a regular basis for IT projects. Depending on the project sometimes I get to talk to the upper brass and pick their brains a bit. Let me start by saying they have a lot of really smart people there working hard to preserve the Harley image and move the brand to a younger consumer.

One of their biggest challenges in the last 50 years has been the buying cycles of consumers. It goes in 5-7 year expansion and contraction patterns closely following the economy. So during the expansion you need to produce more bikes, but then scale back during contraction. Historically that meant buying capacity, hiring people and changing supplier contracts on the up and laying off, selling off and scaling back during the down. Now they have redone their plants to be more scalar and have single lines to produce all bikes.....more or less. Now during the up they just add capacity to an existing line and during the down just limit how much that one line does. The only variable is how much labor they employ. It's a work in progress, but think about this. Every single Harley produced is unique, no 2 are alike. Just wrap your head around what that means from a manufacturing perspective. All bikes are special ordered by the dealers and have almost infinite amounts of customer options. I am amazed they can handle this.

So changing direction and focusing on younger buyers is one of their main goals. However this has to be done evolutionary, not revolutionary. They learned this with the Buel line. One cool thing about big data and analytics is the ability to really study data. When Harley broke down the manufacturing costs, development and cost of sales they never made a dime on Buel. The entire time they were owned by HD they lost money on them. So it had to go. What they learned though is there is a market there and they needed to move into it, but needed a better product that was more desireable. I am not privileged to any NDA information and if I was I certainly couldn't share it here. However I have been told there are new products comings, new technologies going to be integrated into current products and Harley will be changing over time.

Not sure this information really says anything other than Harley is headed in the right direction and it is my belief they will be fine. However all big companies are slow to change and this one really has a challenge to balance keeping an old aging consumer happy with attracting young new buyers.